I teach an introductory course on mammal identification and natural history. This blog serves as a place for all of those stories, photos, facts and fun stuff that simply won't fit in the course. Type in your email below to follow this blog!

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Saturday, August 27, 2011

Kenya and Tanzania Safari: OVERVIEW

I have not been posting recently due to a tremendous amount of travel. I spent a week in Idaho attending a wolf tracking course (more about that in future entries) and then four days later the family and I left for our summer vacation to Africa! I have many photos posted to our Picasa page if you are interested.
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Gerenuk, Samburu National Park,
Kenya 8/11

﻿ We arranged our safari through African Servalcat Safaris and had an amazing adventure. We selected the 14 day Kenya/Tanzania package and cannot say enough good things about every aspect of the trip. We started inquiries in December (for our August trip) and found that Servalcat's owner Sylvester answered every question I had promptly and gave me a sense of comfort regarding the trip and all the details needed for my wife, 15-year-old daughter and I to have a successful vacation. As the date of our departure neared, we began peppering Sylvester with questions both big and small that we had forgotten to ask earlier. By the time we left, we were excited and confident! Sylvester met us at the airport in Nairobi with our driver guide William. Our safari began the next day and lasted for two weeks, In that time, we visited seven parks in two countries. We saw 44 species of mammals and many more species of birds. We witnessed behaviors, some of which were truly remarkable (and will be the subject of future posts).

Below is a list of the mammals we identified on the trip (in the order we saw them):

The list itself is impressive! We also saw (and photographed) a few species of small rodent and bat that I have yet to identify. But the numbers only tell part of the story. Beyond simply identifying the mammals, we really enjoyed spending time watching behaviors. In the coming weeks, I hope to create a series of entries that will do justice to our trip.